Why Comedy Will Always Come Before Journalism for John Oliver

The most important lesson the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight learned from his old boss at The Daily Show.

On Tuesday morning HBO held a press conference with John Oliver and CEO Richard Plepler at the network's midtown Manhattan headquarters. The occasion was the premiere of the second season of Oliver's Last Week Tonight. The weekly show was a breakout success last year, thanks to both Oliver's uncanny comedic aplomb behind a news desk as well as the light it shed on some of the more insidious and underreported issues facing Americans. Oliver and Plepler sat at the head of an enormous conference table, each side of which was lined with members of the press. The table's surface was black and reflective, and the room itself was dated in a particular way I couldn't seem to put my finger on. And then Oliver spoke.

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"Thank you for coming to this Scarface-like... I can only assume there were lines of cocaine around this table at some point."

Plepler, self-assured and impossibly tan, a network executive through and through, burst into laughter along with the rest of the room. "By the way, we take no responsibility for this table or this room," he said. "It was all designed prior to my time here."

"Yeah, when it was run by a Mexican drug cartel," Oliver quickly fired back with a toothy grin, clearly pleased with how he had been able to instantly elevate the mood of such an ominous-looking meeting room filled with tired journalists and HBO employees. He knows better than anyone the power of a well-timed joke, even—and in Oliver's case, especially—when the context might not be so upbeat.

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Despite the pony and multicultural twins Oliver is forced to corral in the season-two promo, the crux of the video is that we should expect more of the same from Oliver and his team over their 34-episode journey that will kick off on Sunday night. But all this really means is that there are not yet any concrete plans to change things up. In the show's first season, Oliver was given free rein by HBO to make Last Week Tonight into whatever he wanted. As Plepler, beaming like a proud parent, told the room, the network was investing in him, not a particular idea for a show. The result was a season full of experimentation and what became one of the most unorthodox shows on television. Unconstrained by commercial breaks, Last Week Tonight was able to dive deep into each night's topic without having to pause to, as Oliver put it, "let Twix have their say." The long-form segments were a risk that paid off, but after one season, Oliver isn't ready to settle on any particular format for his show, and he may never be. Yes, we can expect "more of basically the same," which is to say we don't really know what to expect.

In stark contrast to much of today's hyper-accelerated news cycle, Last Week Tonight's first-season segments were reported and researched at length, at first over the course of a week and then often for longer as the season progressed. Conventional wisdom be damned, TV and Internet audiences loved the show's slow-journalism, and it was the refreshingly thoughtful exposés on topics like the corrupt payday loan industry or the ubiquity of sugar in our food that rang home with viewers the most. In response to the show's happenstance evolution into a largely journalistic entity, the only notable change the show did make following its successful first season was hiring more researchers (there are now four on staff, coming from the likes of the New York Times Magazine and Al Jazeera), and working out a "new system" that will allow them more time to unearth important stories for Oliver and his writers' room to render hilarious.

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But despite all the legitimate reporting and awareness Last Week Tonight has raised, Oliver is obstinate in his insistence that it's simply a comedy show. All the journalism—or, as he puts it, the "random acts of journalism"—is incidental and nothing more than a means to get a laugh. When asked about last year's most newsworthy segment, a spectacular explainer on net neutrality in which he suggested viewers visit the FCC website to voice their displeasure, causing the Washington Post to wonder if he's the "firebrand activist" we need, he responded matter-of-factly: "We just identified a problem, pointed at a means through which they could express their disgust, and they did it."

No big deal. It's kind of like how Bob Dylan would consistently rebuff any suggestion that he was trying to call people to action or deliver a message with his music by saying something like he was just "singing his songs," and that everyone was reading too much into it. On the one hand, you can't really argue with him; on the other hand... C'mon, man. You know EXACTLY what's going on here.

Oliver learned this refusal to consider what he does anything more than comedy from his mentor, Jon Stewart, who for years has maintained a similar position on The Daily Show. For a show like Stewart's that so brazenly shoves its hand into the political beehive, the "comedy" distinction is invaluable. It's both a shield against having to uphold the musty standards of "real" political commentators, as well as a weapon that can be used against the show's critics. In 2004, Stewart famously went on CNN's Crossfire and, for lack of a better word, assaulted Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, most memorably with this line: "If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome. If that's your goal, I wouldn't aim for us, I'd aim for Seinfeld." And later, after Carlson accused Stewart of lobbing softball questions to John Kerry: "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?" The Crossfire hosts had no response. They'd been made to look ridiculous for even arguing with Stewart in the first place.

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It's easy to envision Jon Stewart belaboring this point before sending his protégé off into the premium-cable wilderness, but it's also clear that focusing on comedy is what comes natural to Oliver. He is a comedian, after all, and during the press conference he spoke with the most enthusiasm when discussing jokes rather than his impact on the net-neutrality debate. He relished answering a question about the "Salmon Canon" segment, noting how "it was one of the most joyful two minutes of TV" and that "people getting hit by flying fish is as objectively funny as something as subjective as comedy can be." The show's staff, he said, seeks out "jarring juxtapositions or shocking details that are comic in how appalling they are," and he was practically giddy as he detailed how executive producer Tim Carvell crafted the perfect joke for Oliver to deliver following a weighty moment in the episode on Ferguson. "You don't want any opportunity to go by without a joke," Oliver explained. "The more grim the clip preceding it, the higher degree of difficulty the joke is after it, and the more attractive it is."

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Under Oliver's comedic umbrella, almost anything seems possible. If the goal is to make people laugh instead of to expose corruption or make a political point, a certain weight is lifted and the journalistic side of the operation is free to spread its wings in ways traditional journalism cannot. Investigating the Miss America pageant isn't frivolous because Last Week Tonight is a comedy show and the Miss America pageant lying about its scholarship numbers is kind of hilarious. The relative lack of concern with timeliness frees the show's journalism, as well—Oliver said that he could conceivably see himself covering the Charlie Hedbo tragedy six months or a even a year later. Most importantly, the journalistic work serving as fodder for jokes offers a unique entry point for Oliver's research team, and when you're approaching something from an angle nobody else is, there's no telling what you can find.

This unique perspective is key, both for the researchers and for Oliver himself. Comedians are able to hit such a deep nerve with audiences largely because they are, in a way, social outcasts, observing and commenting from a certain remove. By taking on controversial issues normally reserved for traditional media from an outsider's point of view (his Britishness providing another remove), Oliver's criticism is all the more incisive and all the more relatable to those of us also watching from a distance. Some may say that Oliver is in the "refusal of the call" phase of his folk-hero journey—and who knows, this could be true—but he probably just doesn't want to be anything other than a comic. He certainly doesn't see himself as anything more than that, regardless of how badly we want him to, and if Last Week Tonight is to build on its success, it's probably in his best interest to keep it that way.

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Before he left the Scarface conference room on Tuesday, Oliver answered one final question about his British identity. He acknowledged the value of his foreign perspective, but also admitted that at this point, he basically considers himself an American. He's lived here for 10 years and he's married to an American. He's still an outsider, but he's just American enough to really give a shit about the issues Last Week Tonight is covering as opposed to simply pointing a cold finger and laughing. "I feel invested in this country," he concluded. "I usually say 'we' when talking about America. I feel like I've earned the right to do that. I sound more different than I really am."

Then he got up, said "cheerio," and told us to, please, enjoy the cocaine.

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